Bulletins and News Discussion from March 10th to March 16th, 2025 - The New World Struggles To Be Born; Now Is The Time Of Proxy Wars - COTW: Myanmar

Image is from Wikipedia's article on the war..

I've wanted to cover Myanmar for a while now but haven't had the needed knowledge to write much more than "This situation really sucks." After doing a little reading on the situation, I feel even more confused. A decent analogy is the Syrian Civil War, at least while Assad was in power (though it's still pretty true today) - many different opposition groups, some co-operating with the United States, others not. The main government supported partially by an anti-American superpower, but who could live with that government collapsing if there are deals to be made with the group coming into power. A conflict kept going and exploited at least partially by the United States and other imperial core powers, though with plenty of genuine domestic animosity and desires for political independence.

Recently, the Myanmar government - the mainstream media uses "junta", which is probably accurate despite the connotations - has promised elections at the end of 2025. This doesn't seem likely to happen, and even if it did, how this would work in a country as war-torn as Myanmar is unclear. The government is losing territory and soldiers at a quick pace; they now hold only 21% of the country, though that 21% does at least comprise many of the cities. It's difficult to get a handle on the number of people affected because civil wars and insurgencies have been ongoing in some shape or form for decades, but we're talking at least millions displaced and thousands of civilians killed.

Here's a comment by @TheGenderWitch@hexbear.net from fairly recently that covers the situation in Myanmar:

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The former President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili has been sentenced to 9 years in prison on embezzling charges He fled Georgia in 2013 when his presidential term ended and moved to Ukraine where he would eventually serve as an advisor to President Zelensky. In October 2021 he returned to Georgia and called for protests against the government where he was promptly arrested on his fugitive warrant.
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- am I off base or is this another US puppet hung out to dry when his usefulness to the color revolution evaporated
  
  Saakashvili did cozy up to Bush.
  However it's a complete oversimplification. Saakashvili has a specific grift that appeals mainly to Eastern European liberals. The anti-corruption guy (who is actually corrupt). Similar examples are Poroshenko. Saakashvili enriched himself in plenty of ways in Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine he was stripped of citizenship and deported by Porosh because they're the same guy and Saakashvili stepped out of line and tried to use their only weapon against Porosh. Most of these guys if they actually do anything about corruption is they'll do cleanups of petty corruption mostly by forcing a party line on local bureaucrats to stop trading favors.
  Saakashvili's grift is practically only possible due to the existence of USAID money that creates anti-corruption organizations that will never actually accomplish their goals in Eastern European countries. The problem with these orgs is that they fall into 3 broad flavors, anti-corruption corruption guys (Saakashvili had his own org like this), true believers, and political wreckers. Ironically it's impossible to tell the difference between the 3 on tactics alone because the tactics are the same. A common example is in Ukraine most of these orgs are against sourcing laws. Sourcing laws are a normal thing for most capitalist countries to have to bouy their local economies, where a % of the government's spend on government functions has to purchase goods/services from the country itself. The anti-corruption NGO party line on sourcing laws in Ukraine is that it will allow self-dealing / unfair dealing/ corruption via grants or bidding processes.
  Ukraine and Georgia have a history of trading corrupt guys back and forth across the border. The guy who Saakashvili imprisoned on corruption charges that lead to the 2007 riots and his abdication also went back and forth between Georgia and Ukraine in a political capacity. Unlike Saakashvili, Okruashvili joined the Ukraine defense forces against Russia.

556 comments